From Little Tokyo, With Love

by Sarah Kuhn

  Normally I could talk for hours about judo, but right now I can only feel the immense guilt that overtakes me whenever I think of the parade disaster that ruined everything with the demonstration and the UCLA scout and . . .

  Eliza’s been texting me nonstop since the parade, but I’ve only responded a couple times to reassure her I’m fine, just busy with . . . things. I also sent Sensei Mary a bunch of excuses for missing practice this week. I’m not sure when or how I can face them—especially after all they’ve done for me. Maybe I can’t.

  I dismiss the text.

  “You’re ignoring a text from one of your best friends?” Henry says.

  “Not ignoring it. Just, uh, I’ll respond later,” I say. I tap the photo of the old zoo. “Right now, my mind is way too occupied by our actual clue.”

  “This clue calls for a celebration,” Henry says, slamming his palm on the tabletop, like he’s Thor or some shit. “You stay here, basking in the glow of the pickle. I’ll go get us food. Lots of food!”

  He jumps to his feet, that dancer’s grace flowing through his every move. How can he make something so mundane look like I’m suddenly front row at the ballet?

  “Wait!” I call out as he dances—like, literally dances—away. “You don’t know where anything is!”

  “I’ll figure it out!” he calls back. “One of everything that looks good, right?”

  “That means literally one of everything here,” I say. “We’ll be eating forever.”

  He’s already too far away to hear me. But as I gaze down at the writing on the back of the photo once more, I realize I’m smiling too much to care.

  * * *

  Henry brings back . . . well, basically one of everything. Sizzling steak in garlicky sauce, lovingly ladled over a bed of sticky rice. A gooey egg sandwich, yolk perfectly runny. Handmade pasta with luscious, meaty Bolognese. Lumpia, fried to crisp deliciousness. And tacos so spicy, they’ll make you sweat.

  I’m pretty sure the table’s about to collapse under the weight of all this food, and we haven’t even started exploring dessert options yet.

  I notice Henry surreptitiously glance around before we start eating, pulling his baseball cap lower so it hides his face better. I look around, too, but everyone else still seems to be wrapped up in their own food adventures.

  “We’re okay,” I reassure him, attempting to make my tone light. “No fan mobs.”

  I expect him to flash me that easy grin, but he gives me a tense head-bob, scoops up a taco, and takes a very small bite.

  And then the tension melts away as a look of pure bliss spreads over his face.

  “Ugh, so good,” he groans, cramming the rest of the taco into his mouth with unabashed gusto. He chews and swallows, then gives me a sly smile. “I’ll concede these are way better than anything in New York.”

  “Anything?” I challenge. “You’re really willing to forsake your beloved city over tacos?”

  “They’re awesome tacos,” he says. “And all your talk about the ‘magic’ of LA is winning me over. Pretty soon I’ll have gone full Californian—wearing flip-flops as formalwear and talking about nothing but freeways for, like, hours.”

  He lengthens his vowels on those last two words, affecting an exaggerated Valley girl–type voice.

  “I never talk about freeways,” I say, trying to sound imperious—but an irrepressible smile’s playing around the corners of my mouth, and that just makes him smile even bigger. “But I do think LA is magic, yes.”

  “How did that even start?” he says. “You do not seem like the type to, um, see things that way.”

  “I think . . . hmm.” I pause and take a bite of my own taco, that potent mix of fresh spices exploding on my tongue. No one’s ever asked me that before. “Maybe it has to do with growing up in Little Tokyo,” I say slowly, trying to figure it out. “I know people think everything in LA is . . . new? And, like, made of cheap plastic or something. No sense of history or culture.” I give him a pointed look, and he shrugs and grins, like, Yep, guilty. “But Little Tokyo . . . it has so much of that history, that culture. It’s been around since the early 1900s, and it’s been through a lot. It used to have the largest Japanese American population in North America. And then so many people were forced to abandon their homes and lives because of incarceration during World War II. But they rebuilt after. When I walk those streets . . .” I pause, a surprise lump forming in my throat. I fan myself with a napkin, trying to stave off unshed tears. “Whew, these tacos are spicier than usual.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Henry says, sounding like he doesn’t buy that for a second.

  “When I walk those streets,” I continue, “I can feel that. That sense of history and community and struggle and passion. There are so many stories jammed into every block—the whole neighborhood feels so alive. And then, of course, there’s Mr. Sherman.”

  “Mr. Who?” Henry says.

  “Mr. Sherman!” I say, my grin reinstating itself. “He’s this ancient cat who’s guarded one of the neighborhood boutiques forever. No one knows exactly where he came from or how he’s lived this long or why he has eyes that legit look like human eyes. But he’s always there. Flopped in the doorway and shooting haughty cat glares at everyone who passes by. Tell me that’s not magic.”

  “It absolutely is,” Henry says, nodding vigorously. “All right, fine. Between Mr. Sherman and the tacos, you’ve convinced me: LA is an enchanted wonderland!”

  “Thank you,” I say. “But how have you been out here this long and not had good tacos?”

  “I’ve really only been out here for work,” he says with a shrug. “The kids’ show I was on—the one with the choir?—filmed in New York. Dance! Off! and the movie with Grace were here, but I’m working so much, I don’t really eat anything except the very sensible salads production orders for me.”

  “Gotta maintain that hot-guy physique,” I say, cocking an eyebrow.

  I expect him to laugh, but his smile gets more forced. “Yeah, well . . . when you’re known for something . . .” He shrugs again—but that seems forced, too. And for some reason, I feel bad.

  “But now you have the chance to be known for something else, right?” I say, trying to sound encouraging. “This movie with Grace—if we can find Grace.”

  “As you so helpfully pointed out to me during our first meal together,” he says, giving me a slight smile.

  Shit. Now I feel really bad. The nure-onna isn’t supposed to feel bad about anything.

  “It’s true, though, there are a lot of layers to this role,” he says, his demeanor going back to perfectly smooth—like he’s being interviewed on the red carpet or something. This bothers me, and I can’t quite articulate why. “I get to be funny, I get to be serious. I get to have a really emotional sibling-bonding scene with Grace. And I’m grateful they cast me, period. I’m usually too brown or not brown enough or people just don’t know what’s going on here.” He gestures to his face. “They always ask—”

  “‘What are you?’” I finish, smiling slightly. “I’m very familiar.”

  “Like we’re trying to trick people or something,” he says, shaking his head. “’Cause, y’know, Guess the Ambiguously Ethnic Person’s True Background is a fun game to play.”

  “For everyone except the Ambiguously Ethnic Person. Man, you’d think, in this day and age . . .” I realize I don’t even know where I’m going with that. Or how I can complete that thought and actually believe it. I’m trying to make some grand statement, but my own experience doesn’t back it up.

  “You have your own stuff, too, right? About not fitting in?” he says, as if reading my mind. Something more genuine sparks in his eyes, and I can’t help it—I feel warmed.

  “I mean, it’s not weird to be a half-Japanese girl in Los Angeles these days,” I say slowly. “But it is weird to be a half-Japanese girl with mysterious, scandalous
parentage living with her full-Japanese relatives and not totally looking like them. There are a lot of stares. A lot of . . . questions.” I self-consciously tuck that strand of red hair into my baseball cap. His eyes follow my every move, lingering a little on the hair.

  “And you don’t talk about this with anyone—this not fitting in,” he says. Not as a question. He just knows.

  I open my mouth to tell him that of course I don’t talk to anyone about that. I’m the freaking nure-onna, goddammit. I retreat to the shadows. I plot my revenge. I don’t think about feelings.

  But . . . he’s looking at me so earnestly and openly.

  And suddenly I find myself saying a bunch of other stuff instead. Stuff I don’t usually say out loud.

  “My Aunties have it tough anyway,” I begin. “They haven’t always been accepted by the community either. I don’t need to be complaining to them. About my, um, feelings. My temper gets the best of me enough as it is—I almost got kicked out of judo once because of it.” He smiles a little at that. “And anyway, even if I did talk to them—or my sisters—they wouldn’t . . .” I trail off, something catching in my throat.

  His smile turns gentle. “They wouldn’t understand,” he says.

  I look down at my food, blinking back the tears that want to spill out and fuck up our tacos.

  “I get it,” he says. “The mixed-kid thing—it’s both totally weird and totally normal. I’m an only child, but people never believe I belong to either of my parents—”

  “Wait, you’re an only child?” I say. “My family’s small by most Asian American standards, but—”

  “My family’s tiny,” he says, holding his thumb and forefinger mere millimeters apart to illustrate. “My grandparents—both sides—weren’t super keen on my parents’ marriage, and my mom and dad are both only children, too. So. It’s really just us.” His expression turns wistful. “It’s cool that you have Little Tokyo, that community—the way you talk about it is so . . .” The corners of his mouth lift. “. . . joyful. I wish I had something like that—my parents kinda kept to themselves after dealing with all that disapproval. And then I started working so young, I sometimes feel like, I dunno, I don’t have those connections?” He shrugs, trying to play it off, but I can tell this bothers him. How could it not? “But do you ever feel . . . well, not quite part of it? ’Cause when I think about my experiences with communities that should be mine, I also feel like maybe I’m not welcome. Like I’m not enough, y’know?”

  “There are certainly people who want me to feel that way,” I say. Craig Shimizu’s smug face floats through my brain. “I guess it is weird sometimes. There are definitely Japanese people who think I’m just, like, white with a little sprinkle of soy sauce. Or some kind of aberration, an unfortunate dilution of pure Asianness. But it’s not like white people look at my face and think I’m one of them.” I think of all the Beckys who want to hear my accent, all the fetishizing white guys who have said truly disgusting things to my face, all the grown adults who compliment my English and use the word “exotic” to describe me. “It’s almost like . . . you’re seen as someone who can never really belong anywhere.”

  “And everyone projects all kinds of things onto you,” Henry says, nodding in recognition. “You’re a mongrel—a mistake. You’re a watered-down diet version of something else.”

  “Like a fraction,” I say. “A thing to be claimed only if the community deems you worthy.”

  I flash back to Belle and me in second grade, her screaming “She’s half!” at the teacher who didn’t believe we were related. She’d been trying to stand up for me. But something about that had still cut deep—as if I could never be a whole version of anything.

  “Yeah,” Henry says. “Or you’re a great savior, here to unite two worlds in peace.”

  “Like Aquaman,” I say.

  He lets out a surprised laugh—and this time, he totally snorts. “Hey—Aquaman was tight.”

  I don’t know what it is about that that makes me start laughing. Maybe it’s the way he says it, with so much sincerity and gusto. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s grinning at me while lit by a neon pickle wearing a bow. Maybe it’s . . . oh, I don’t know.

  But I do laugh. Long and hard. And he’s right there with me, snorting all the way.

  “I just want to be able to exist as myself, you know?” Henry says, as we’re catching our breaths. “Not a savior, not a tool, not a mystery to be solved. Not someone who has to be described using fractions.”

  “Just a whole you,” I murmur.

  “Yeah,” he says, smiling. “I really hope you get to meet Grace tomorrow. I think you could talk to her. About all this. She’s really empathetic?”

  I nod, picking up another taco and nibbling at the corner. I don’t want to interrupt, hoping against hope that he’ll keep going, tell me more.

  “She . . .” He meets my eyes, his brow furrowing. Wow. I don’t think I’ve seen Henry Chen’s smooth brow furrow, ever. I didn’t know it was even capable of such things. “She talked to me about the panic attack stuff,” he finally says. “Had her therapist refer me to someone. That’s what she’s been helping me with. She has an anxiety disorder—she’s talked about it a lot in interviews—and she helped me understand that that isn’t, like, a shameful thing. That I don’t have to shove it down and pretend I’m okay. Which is what my parents would prefer.”

  He snags the last bit of sticky rice, his more confident expression sliding into place. I’m beginning to understand that that’s the expression he puts on when he’s getting truly uncomfortable, when he’s done talking about something. So I don’t push it.

  It hits me that I’ve just talked quite a bit to this near stranger about things I never share. I should be feeling weird about that, uncomfortable. And yet, talking to Henry about all this stuff feels like the most natural thing in the world.

  “I hope you get to meet her,” he says again, shoveling the sticky rice into his mouth.

  I give him a tentative smile. “Me too.”

  Something I don’t want to put a name to has taken up residence in my chest—a tiny light, a flutter of hope. A little fairy thing that’s about as far from the nure-onna’s vengeance-loving ways as you can get.

  I can actually see myself meeting Grace in front of one of these old zoo rock formations. Her embracing me. Both of us teary. It must be said that the whole thing—finding this scrap of a photo behind an old library tile, the mysterious inscription directing us to a legendary LA location, the potential reunion—feels . . . well, like a fairy tale.

  With a happy ending.

  Wait, am I starting to believe in happy endings now?

  Belle will never let me live this down.

  Once upon a time, there lived a handsome . . . no, cute. No, adorable prince. (Ugh, did I really just use the word “adorable”?) He was gifted with an enchanted smile and the magic of dance and used his charms to entertain everyone in the land. But his dancing feet masked so many more magical abilities that were far less appreciated—a genuine empathy and a goofy laugh and the talent for eating multiple delicious spicy foods all in one sitting.

  Not to mention the magical ability to totally distract the nure-onna from her very important mission.

  What was I talking about again?

  TEN

  “Rika . . . Rika-chan! My hair’s on fire and you’re the only one who can put it out!”

  “That’s nice . . . wait, what?” I whirl around to see Belle cocking a quizzical eyebrow at me. I’m standing atop a small stepladder in the cramped kitchen of Katsu That. I’ve been counting down the minutes—the seconds—until five p.m., when I can finally leave and set out on my quest to the old Griffith Park Zoo. Henry is supposed to meet me outside the restaurant, incognito baseball cap firmly in place. After the library debacle from the day before, we’re determined to be discreet.

  I�
��ve been distracted all shift, my brain whirling around what this rendezvous might hold. In just a couple short days, Grace Kimura has grown into an epic figure in my mind, an exiled queen unfairly cast out from her kingdom. Or maybe she’s more like a fairy godmother who will wave her glittery magic wand and make me whole.

  Ugh. Did I really just think that? My fantasies are getting so flowery. The nure-onna does not do bibbidi-bobbidi-boos.

  The nure-onna also does not do whatever my brain is doing with Henry Chen. I can’t explain it, but in the midst of me spinning various scenarios about my impending Grace reunion, he keeps popping into my mind. I hear his dorky snort-laugh as I shred cabbage for salads. See his smile—the soft, genuine one, devoid of smugness—as I tote plates of piping hot katsu to customers. Remember his fingertips brushing against my skin as I leaned precariously over the water fountain, and how I got all goose-bumpy—

  “Rika. Chan!” Belle claps her hands on her hips and stomps her foot to get my attention.

  I snap back to the present and blink at her a few times, trying to remember what I climbed onto the stepladder for.

  “You want to bring that Worcestershire sauce over here? And really, no reaction to my hair being on fire?”

  I slowly turn to look at the bottle in my hand. Oh, right. I was getting the Worcestershire so we could make more katsu sauce. The restaurant has been chaos all afternoon. Nikkei Week is always extra busy, but today’s positively off the charts.

  “Your hair looks beautiful,” I say, hastily clambering down from the stepladder and passing her the bottle. “You’re the only person I know who could pull off fire.”

  “Hmph,” Belle says, somewhat mollified. I’m relieved that she seems to have forgotten yesterday’s mochi demo debacle, but that’s Belle—she’s on to her next royal task, no need to dwell on the negative. She pours the sauce into a bowl and starts mixing in the other ingredients. “What is going on with you today? Your face is very red.”